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Freethought News & Atheism 101Sun, 24 Dec 2017 09:47:10 +0000en-UShourly1https://wordpress.org/?v=4.9.3From Aceh Animus to Nationwide Sweep: Gays under fire in Indonesiahttp://www.freethought.com/?p=90
http://www.freethought.com/?p=90#respondSun, 24 Dec 2017 09:40:50 +0000http://www.freethought.com/?p=90continue reading]]>Where many other states in similar positions failed in democratic consolidation in the midsts of long-running military dictatorship, Indonesia’s decentralization has proven bountiful and baneful for the substantive rights for which we would hope in a modern democracy. For example, while running for a second term, Basuki (“Ahok”) Purnama wound up imprisoned after criticizing his Islamist detractors for their extra-scriptural mudslinging. Being both Christian and ethnically Chinese exposed Ahok to the deeply unfortunate mistreatment of both. Initially the Islamists were held at bay by the territorial sovereignty held throughout Indonesia’s 34 provinces (mostly in Aceh, where shariah is codified). With the widespread religious considerations of Pancasila-pluralism being defended by the two major and dominant Islamic civil society organizations (Nadhlatul Ulama and Muhammdiyah), we saw the codification of the shariah only in a handful of areas.

Now, as secularist parties begin to court Islamists, they have began to pursue policy that would have been unthinkable a decade ago. Also, with Islamists growing more brazen (e.g., Ahok’s plight), we see a push more toward British colonial anti-sodomy laws. Where the Islam Defenders Front (FPI) is contemplating the punishment of blasphemers through the indirect sanction of the government agency responsible for halal certification (giving great power to their aims), the Family Love Alliance (AILA) is pursuing the sexually permissive. The Indonesian Constitutional Court recently rejected an AILA-filed petition to criminalize extramarital sex between consenting adults.

While homosexuality has been far from celebrated in the most populace Muslim majority nation, recent history has been relatively unfamiliar with the current targeting of gay men for arrest and other attack with a high profile multiple-arrest taking place in November, 2016. It was reported also that a group of trans women were targeting by a vigilante-gang last week in Aceh. While at the federal level, homosexuality and transgender behavior and identity are not in violation of any code, in Aceh they both defy the shariah.

One perspective on “making lemonade,” “silver-lined clouds,” and optimistic in the face of despair what not, would say that one potential benefit for Indonesian gay men and lesbian women is the increased likelihood of granted asylum away from governments either directly persecuting or unwilling or unable to protect the potentially and actually persecuted. According to Human Rights Watch, Indonesian Religious Affairs Minister Lukma Hakim Saifuddin offered a position highly recognizable to those who heard the American Christian apologetic of “love the sinner, hate the sin.” Saifuddin officially said that LGBT people should be “nurtured, not shunned…” “We cannot be hostile [toward] nor hate [LGBT people] as they are also citizens of the state. This doesn’t mean that we condone or allow for the LGBT movement to shift the religious values and the identity of the nation.” Saifuddin furthered that religious education or psychological services should be recommended alongside the responsibility of religious adherents “nurtur[ing]” LGBT people by “reacquainting” them with religious teaching and to remind them that “there is no religion that tolerates LGBT action.”

]]>http://www.freethought.com/?feed=rss2&p=900Inference of Abhorrent Atheism (Maybe) a Bridge Too Farhttp://www.freethought.com/?p=87
http://www.freethought.com/?p=87#respondSun, 24 Dec 2017 04:08:48 +0000http://www.freethought.com/?p=87continue reading]]>Three scholars published in Evolutionary Psychology Science have made a claim that the post-industrial world’s muting of the thinning of “fitness-damaging genetic mutations,” that a predisposition to a lack of belief in God (atheism) is associated with “four indicators of [a high] mutational load” (poor genetic health, fluctuating asymmetry, left-handedness, and autism). Going off of the abstract (what I had direct access to) and two media posts (including Newsweek and Christianity Today), the mass-media inference is that Atheists are less healthy (physically and emotionally) and that religious folks greater longevity of happiness and vitality.

The abstract for “The Mutant Says in His Heart, “There Is No God”: the Rejection of Collective Religiosity Centred Around the Worship of Moral Gods Is Associated with High Mutational Load” (Edward Dutton, Guy Madison, and Curtis Dunkel. Evolutionary Psychology Science, 20 Dec. 2017) says:

Industrialisation leads to relaxed selection and thus the accumulation of fitness-damaging genetic mutations. We argue that religion is a selected trait that would be highly sensitive to mutational load. We further argue that a specific form of religiousness was selected for in complex societies up until industrialisation based around the collective worship of moral gods. With the relaxation of selection, we predict the degeneration of this form of religion and diverse deviations from it. These deviations, however, would correlate with the same indicators because they would all be underpinned by mutational load. We test this hypothesis using two very different deviations: atheism and paranormal belief. We examine associations between these deviations and four indicators of mutational load: (1) poor general health, (2) autism, (3) fluctuating asymmetry, and (4) left-handedness. A systematic literature review combined with primary research on handedness demonstrates that atheism and/or paranormal belief is associated with all of these indicators of high mutational load.

Immediate thoughts and questions upon the abstract:

The first thing that strikes my mind, is the definition of atheism. If the definition of atheism relates to no participating in the “collective worship of moral gods,” then there are several contentions that I would offer before Dutton, Madison, and Dunkel. First, the worship of “moral” gods (collective or otherwise) is relatively recent in human history. In his arguable finest, and final work, sociologist Robert N. Bellah discusses that gods as moral arbiters is established only in the last few thousands of years in human history (and not all cultures have adopted them during this time) (Religion in Human Evolution from the Paleolithic to the Axial Age, 2011).

Is this behavior (collective worship) exclusively linked to “good” genetics, or is it the worship of “moral” gods. Looking at the literature on pro-social behavior (i.e., social capital and Robert Putnam). The abstract seems to indicate that atheism is a solitary act. There are communities of atheists that focus on moral goods and collective, prosocial action (e.g., Ethical Culturists and Secular Humanists). Some of these individuals gather in what would appear as church-analogs (i.e., Sunday Assemblies).

What about those who portend to the “worship of moral gods,” but as individuals or in smaller sects (cults, etc).

Also, I am assuming that this is measured in part by frequency of attendance at religious services. This behavior has fluctuated significantly and at times prior to the industrial revolution (and its presumed “high mutational load” preserving effects) has been significantly lower than it is now. Is this frequency change taken into account?

Who were your subjects used and what was the size of your sample? I am rather interested in seeing the data set.

The Christianity Today article cites the study saying that there is a “weak, but significant” link between left-handedness and autism and those who identify as non-religious. It also quotes the study in that “‘Complex pre-industrial societies were strongly selected not merely to be religious in a general sense, but to revere and believe in moral gods who were concerned with people”s moral behaviour and to engage in collective rituals to worship these gods.”

Newsweek also quotes the article, “Maybe the positive relationship between religiousness and health is not causal—it’s not that being religious makes you less stressed so less ill. Rather, religious people are a genetically normal remnant population from preindustrial times, and the rest of us are mutants who’d have died as children back then.” And, “Religiousness makes you more pro-social, and you become more religious when you’re stressed. Religious people would have been sexually selected for because their pro-social, moral, unstressed nature would be attractive.”

Newsweek also cites earlier research by Dutton suggesting a link between increased intelligence and ascription to atheism as a potential liability for a society in that when a society becomes more intelligent and atheist, “We will be taken over by a more religious society which is more ethnocentric than us. In that our intelligence is decreasing, I suspect civilization will go backwards, Natural selection will return and we will become more religious once more. This seems to be a rule of history.”

Some final thoughts:

It seems that individuals tending to be more inclined to collective, prosocial contemplation tend to be healthier.

It seems that lone (‘kooky’) Atheists who may not “fit” into the central group dynamic may be more vocal with their constructs of disbelief and anti-religious discourse, as opposed to those within the flock who are part of the (as yet to be seen discussed) phenomena of “belonging and not believing.” That perhaps as a social organism, natural selection weeds off those who are not active (albeit regardless of shunning) members of the community body through deleterious psycho-physiological effects.

I have emailed anthropologist and co-author Edward Dutton for further insight into this interesting new piece. As access to journal articles is expensive if you do not have open access by current institutional affiliation, I am unable to give as deep a critique as I would like on methodology or conclusion.

Bellah, Robert N. 2011. Religion in Human Evolution from the Paleolithic to the Axial Age. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.

]]>http://www.freethought.com/?feed=rss2&p=870War on Christmas Losing Ammunition by Indifferencehttp://www.freethought.com/?p=77
http://www.freethought.com/?p=77#respondSat, 23 Dec 2017 20:50:19 +0000http://www.freethought.com/?p=77continue reading]]>A Sacramento Bee post illustrates the changing religious demography in relation to millennials (youths born in the U.S. post 1980) and how 88 percent may be celebrating the Christmas holiday, that only 44% of those see it as religious. In their usual journalism that is, as always, conspicuously unburdened with originality or depth–CNN highlighted (in their perennial fashion) the “War on Christmas” by asking if President Donald Trump had “ended it” “as promised.” Holidays have human origins, and this only lends more circumstantial evidence to the fact that the winter solstice inspires us to get together with our friends, have some good food, be a bit more generous, and inevitably set goals for ourselves that we will let atrophy by mid February. The only thing existent about the “war on Christmas,” is that it is under religious pretense and its purpose is to make money for a handful of shameful industries (such as CNN and NewsCorp).
]]>http://www.freethought.com/?feed=rss2&p=770Dynastic Opponent of Hindu Nationalists Steps up to the Platehttp://www.freethought.com/?p=74
http://www.freethought.com/?p=74#respondSat, 23 Dec 2017 19:26:03 +0000http://www.freethought.com/?p=74continue reading]]>Hindu nationalism has been on the rise socially and politically in India and received the baton of civil authority under the ascension of Narendra Modi to the prime ministership in 2014. Since that time beef for consumption has been banned, and a man who was once denied entry to the United States for his role in sectarian violence is now being courted by admirer and U.S. President Donald Trump. While dynastic politics of any sort should give us pause (as Thomas Paine said in the Rights of Man that dominion has no business being hereditary), the Hindu nationalists have a renewed opposition through Sonia Gandhi’s son Rahul has assumed the presidency of India’s Congress party. India is slated as a “secular state,” and this has been sorely neglected, if not caveated under the rein of the Bharatiya Janata Party.
]]>http://www.freethought.com/?feed=rss2&p=740Muslim Mob Attacks Coptics in Gizahttp://www.freethought.com/?p=71
http://www.freethought.com/?p=71#respondSat, 23 Dec 2017 19:04:03 +0000http://www.freethought.com/?p=71continue reading]]>For years, Coptics and other Christians have faced violent persecution in the Sunni Muslim-majority (90%) Egypt. Two laws relating to the construction of religious buildings were enacted in the last 16 years, the first concerning the construction of mosques (2001) and the second, Christian churches (2016). The distinction between them illustrates the rampant sectarian privilege in the northeast African state. Following Friday prayers, a mob of (reportedly) hundreds of individuals gathered, attacked parishioners, and destroyed contents within the church. According to the Coptic diocese of Atifh, members of the mob “shouted hostile slogans” and “demanded the church’s demolition.” While governments can adopt policy relating religious minorities to ensure a certain semblance of agency of minority sects as socio-political actors, when the government enshrines sectarian privilege, it gives license to sectarian conflict and hostility. Ergo, another example of the need for the separation of mosque and state.
]]>http://www.freethought.com/?feed=rss2&p=710Anti-Church/State Separation Attorney Appointed to Federal Benchhttp://www.freethought.com/?p=66
http://www.freethought.com/?p=66#respondThu, 21 Dec 2017 20:33:09 +0000http://www.freethought.com/?p=66continue reading]]>A volunteer attorney with the pro-religion in the public sphere advocacy organization “First Liberty” has been appointed to a seat on the Fifth Circuit U.S. Court of Appeals. The U.S. Senate confirmed Jim C. Ho to the position this week. Judge Ho’s past work has involved allowing religious individuals to bypass the separation of church and state as outlined in both the letter and spirit of the law.
]]>http://www.freethought.com/?feed=rss2&p=660U.S. Dept. of Education teaches us a lesson on need for church state separation.http://www.freethought.com/?p=48
http://www.freethought.com/?p=48#respondSun, 17 Dec 2017 22:06:58 +0000http://www.freethought.com/?p=48

The US Secretary of Education is teaching us all a lesson in the need for competence and secularity in political appointees responsible for such critical features as the funding of the education of our children.